


An empty courtyard

by laughingpineapple



Category: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Genre: Doomed Timeline, Ghosts, M/M, Sore Loser, morbid jerk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-15 10:10:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4602786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That night was not the first time they met under the prison's walls and a livid moonlight. It was not the first time they reached out for each other and grasped at thin air.<br/>There had been two ghosts, then, instead of one, and a growing dark spot on the ground.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An empty courtyard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ziskandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziskandra/gifts).



Cabanela counts the tiles of the prison's outer wall, long and short and moldy and ready to fall apart. There is a flippant pleasure in indulging in futility, like he'd almost forgotten what it felt like to wrap his brain around a pointless task and let it rest in circles. A luxury, a distant memory. Small comforts. Cabanela counts the tiles of the prison's wall because nothing else is going to happen, and the spotlights are too bright for counting stars. Might as well.

They did not let him in. That, the moment he ran out of breath and shouted threats, is the moment it ended. This is a coda, and nobody cares for those.

Truth is, the anger hasn't hit yet. He can feel it, a dark tide rising behind his back. He cannot turn around.

  
  


-

  
  


On the other end of the courtyard, by the stairs to the underground special wing for special prisoners, a ghostly flame halts its ascent with a pang of guilt he thought he had left behind: he was not expecting visitors.

  
  


Cabanela does not see him at first. That's fair: he, too, failed to notice the blood seeping through his old friend's feet, thicker than the flickering projection of his shoes, and the lifeless body it came from. They are not as observant as they used to be, it seems.

Death will do that even to the best and brightest, it seems.

Nonetheless, former professional pride compels him to notice that the ghost standing ten feet from him has aged badly from the last image he carries of their years together. A young detective, righteous and furious and splendid as he gripped his lapel and growled that he'd make him eat his confession and reopen Alma's case. It's the one image he tried to pin down on canvas over and over again, but that his brush strokes were never vital enough to recreate. Hah. Joke's on them both now. So much gray in his hair. Sharp angles frame the corners of his mouth.

Behind the ghost, his corpse looks jarringly normal, fallen to the ground like any old chump shot at point blank, execution style, coat soaked in blood. Deep down, it rings wrong: like Cabanela could forget about him and spit on their friendship, and rightfully so, but never, ever be simply human, not even in death. What a disappointment.

But here's the clincher: if the precinct's miracle boy stopped caring five years ago, bouncing off the soft cocoon of Jowd's lies and letting him drown in peace – if he ever cared at all, he wants to think, but of all the walls he's built that was never the most convincing – then why is he here, why now, what force could pin him to the ground and leave him lying down.

  
  


“Why”, Jowd asks, or thinks of asking, as ghosts do (he's new, he's learning), and the need for this one answer grounds him to the earth. He is not free of trash, it seems: he could slip by unseen, leave this heavy baggage behind with all the rest, what's one more unanswered question after all. But Cabanela was never a weight. Cabanela was- hard to define, a confusing set of faraway memories, all burning, all alight.

Jowd's features tentatively gleam under the moonlight as his soul remembers them, bone by bone, muscle by muscle down to old wounds and that one persistent kink in his neck. He hasn't been himself in a long time.

  
  


Cabanela catches a glimpse of blond and green come out of the stairs. His ghost jumps back in surprise, then disbelief, then, for some opaque reason Jowd cannot discern, he seems to settle on a grand performance of guilt, from the wrinkle in his brow to the tense curve of his spine.

“Why”, Jowd asks again.

“I came to visit”, he eventually answers, eyes trained on him.

“Bit late for that. You used to be punctual, old friend.”

“I was held back.”

“That, I can see.” Moving closer, Jowd can appreciate the patterns of fresh blood on white fabric. Been years since he last locked eyes with a corpse, still feels just as intimate. It is terrible, probably, and he can't look away.

“Eyes up here, baby. Coat's still white.”

“You came to visit...” ...and he got shot. Him, too, gunshots tracing a pattern, and Jowd has to wonder what it might mean. “In the end, I tainted it for you.”

“Coat's still white”, Cabanela repeats in a steady voice, shaking his head.

And it is. In all fairness, it is. Burning white, cutting a hole in the dull reality that surrounds him. Not a disappointment, maybe, after all. This is the intensity he missed and it bubbles around him, fizzles and bursts in flashes of unrestrained memories.

  
  


_There is a gun pressed against his chest._

  
  


Jowd cocks his head, unsure of what he is seeing. Shared visions, he guesses, in the same way their thoughts feel like words.

  
  


“ _Convenient,_ _Inspector, so very convenient_ _. I didn't know I'd find you here”, taunts a voice from their distant past._

“ _You don't knooow me at all.” He keeps his wits about him, rethinks everything he has known in the past five years._ Jowd arrives to a conclusion in the same breath as Cabanela's memory does. Together, would they have cracked it?

“ _How right you are.”_ _Yomiel's voice drips disgust._ _“You're worse than I thought.”_

_No r_ _eply_ __._ _ _He has nothing to explain._

  
  


_It's a clean shot. He does not suffer for long._

  
  


“ _Beg.”_

_No reply._

“ _I said, beg.”_

_It's hard to convince a man who has just lost everything. Yomiel props his body against the wall and a force weighs on Cabanela's legs, pressing at his kneecaps, but for now, he stands._

  
  


_Cabanela has just entered the courtyard, he is observing a minute of silence. He is crying,_ _Jowd can feel_ _the warm wet trail of the first tear falling. A ghost emerges from the shadows and for one moment, he is hopeful. Like he could still grasp at a miracle,_ _for as long as he can keep his breath_ _. The ghost grins._

  
  


_There is a gun pressed against his_ _chest_ _but his anger is busy elsewh_ __ere._ _ _This is a coda and nobody cares for those, the show's already over. He lost, he lost, he lost._ _Possession twirls along his nerves, pressing, crushing, and it's out of sheer stubborness that he stands. He will not give him the satisfaction. He will not go down._

  
  


_A confused memory. Red._

  
  


“ _How does it feel, to be on this end?_ _How's the adrenaline pumping, can you see what it's like, to look ahead and see that you've lost it all?_ _”_

_No reply._ _(yes)_

  
  


“ _If you were here for the_ _electric_ _show, I'm afraid I beat you_ _to it_ _._ _Now everyone who ever knew about your stain is dead, isn't it convenient, Inspector._ _”_

_He breaks._

  
  


The wind blows a leaf between them and Jowd would very much like to make like a tree and follow suit: anything, any destination would be preferable to facing the realization that Cabanela died for him, to facing Cabanela with the knowledge that he died for him. Why isn't he far away living his life, what is he doing here, why that gash of humanity leaking out of his perfect spotless stoic resistance only when Yomiel mentioned that he had seen him die, it's not fair.

“You never came”, Jowd says. The accusation begs for a simpler answer, any excuse to take himself away from the spotlight.

“I was busy, baby, you kept me busy.”

Not that one. Gods damn it, partner.

“I failed”, he adds.

Jowd can't recall him ever being this quiet. And of course – he, his soul, his self, is standing right here, and his body is lying over there, which is not a very Cabanela state to be in, is it. Cut off from all rhythm-tapping and small touches, from his fingertips and the hitches in his voice and the distinctive slouch of his shoulders, what is he, what are they. Jowd is holding onto this one thread of memories, ready to float away; Cabanela is not letting go of this tension. Muscle memory – his fists clench.

Jowd shrugs. “You did what you could.”

“Not _enough_.”

The raw grief of that reply is enough to make him flinch. Cabanela swoops closer, holding onto the hem of Jowd's coat, vivid enough, bright enough to make it real, and along with his friend's lean frame Jowd withstands five years of hopes crashing down with him. A heavy tide.

“Baby, it wasn't enough.”

Oh, he knows better than to contradict him. He knows how to step aside and let his rage flow. Cabanela screams at him, at his corpse, he melts into the folds of Jowd's coat only to cry that he didn't touch them for good luck that morning, and you know what's even more unfair, that he waited to try the new menu at the Chicken Kitchen so they could go together and now they never will. There's a drawer full of presents in his bedroom, small things that made him think of his friend, and when someone else will open it they will never be able to tell what thread ties those items together. This was the big night. That red hat Jowd gave him, he wore it so much that he had to get it mended. He had a list of people who dared to spread lies and slander about a homicide they knew nothing of and who will tell them off, now? Who will know the truth and pass onto a new generation of detectives the tales of Jowd the good man, the best the division ever saw?

Jowd observes, remembers, admires, keeps his memories to himself as his friend's burden is heavy enough on its own. Cabanela was always a sore loser – comes in bundle with a long-standing habit of not losing, he supposes, and breaks into a fond smile as he watches the anger dissipate one thread at a time, as the man is forced to confront the realization that it's inconsequential now. All of it, he can let go.

All this pain for nothing and isn't that just the funniest thing. They're dead. Jowd saw the punchline early on and once the tide has fallen, he voices it with a hearty laughter:

“Look at us. Two fools.”

It's ridiculous. They are dead and they are here and he is not going into the unknown alone: beyond all hope, Cabanela found him and is tagging along. Exhilarating. What do they have left if not laughter.

And Cabanela joins in, weakly, forced to see that in the end Jowd is there with him, talking to him, laughing with him. With his armour stripped down, he is bleeding love. He missed him, so much.

“The best fools, baby. The veeery best.” He allowes himself one last angry jolt, because it's just not fair: “But I wanted you to _live_.”

Jowd shrugs.

“I didn't.”

Cabanela shakes his head. He would punch him, but to what end.

  
  


At least they will disappear together. In a minute, an hour, a day. Can this moment stretch until dawn? They make it to the upper edge of the wall, by the barbed wire, in smokes and dust; clouds move fast but cannot hide the full moon's halo. On the ground, a gust of wind takes the blood-stained scarf away. Cabanela holds onto the perfect memory of red fabric and throws one end of it around Jowd's neck, nesting himself against his broad shoulders, legs sticking out, his legs always stick out. Jowd gives them a playful nudge and passes through them.

“Jowd, I.”

“I know. I'm sorry.” What else is there to say.

“You don't even-”

“I do.”

“Well, then. You knooow it.”

He knows, and he is sorry: he can feel it in every fiber of Cabanela's ghost pulling toward him and he doesn't have enough warmth left in him to reciprocate, not with anything resembling the man's ardor, but all the same, he hasn't felt this good in five years. Jowd presses an amused kiss on Cabanela's forehead, his partner can't feel it and neither can he and yet the act is there, a faint idea of beard brushing against frowned brow. They are dead. The night is young.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> 'something tragic' more like 'the single most tragic non-canon-divergent idea I could find', because if writing Cabanela has ever taught me anything it's not to half-ass the scope of anything ever. I couldn't believe I actually matched on my otp to end all otps and filling your prompt was a delight, I hope it's to your taste and that you have a grrrrreat exchange!


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